Lufia finally debuts to the GBA system. This game is a good addition to any player who loves RPG's and is on the go or on a road trip. However, unlike the previous Lufias, it isn't as strong as it should be. First lets talk about the good points. Graphically, the game presents pretty well. Although, frame rates/sound do tend to drop on occasion. Sound quality (other than the dropping on occasion) is very tuney and you'll a lot of remix classics of Lufia2 musics. The control of the game is pretty smooth and well done. The battle system is good graphically, but it's aspects are weak.

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The storyline is pretty good. This takes place approx 100 or so years later after the heroes of Lufia 3 vanquished the sentenials. The storyline starts out as treasure hunters to get your hunters guild. Then a prophet comes to your town and you are asked to take her back to your village. As the story continues, the main character becomes 'cursed' and you are to embark on a journey to uncurse him. This is no easy task. A evil dominate army comes and takes over a nearby town near your land. The story unfolds even more.

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While the story is interesting, the game play is not. This game is purposely difficult! There are many aspects (least I think) Atlus put in (or by accident) that break Lufia's concepts of the previous games. First, the battle system. There are three real bad aspects of the battle system. First, the speed of the system is not very fast pace as most RPGs are and it moves very sluggish. Even attacks take too much time to execute most of the time. In combat, once you make a choice, that choice is MADE. You cannot go back. This is the FIRST RPG I've played that has ever done this. It is easy to make an mistake and opps! This can cost your players the battle if your one of those players that do this often. The third aspect is the display system. Hit points, mana, and IP are displayed in bar graphs. There are no numeric displays at all during battle (only in submenus). So you need to guess how much these values are. One good thing though about battle is that you can switch out your characters and until you fully confirm it, you can continue to switch characters. This is also the only way to actually see your hp/mp/ip numeric values. A bit tedious, but the only effective way.

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Another negative aspect of this game is experience points and gold. On some battles (the very hard ones), gold will NOT drop. Sometimes this will happen numerous times. Experience is SHARED in this system. You can have a total of eight characters in a party, while only four can be active at a time, characters in the group get the experience. However, this is shared. So if you have eight party members and gain 1,000 exp points, it's divided up eight ways. So it takes awhile to level up. Lufia presents an IP system, though not very strong compared to Lufia 3.

Lufia 4's IP's system is based off combining your tamed monster. The power can only be unleashed when the power is full. Until you've unleashed it the first time, you won't know the effect/strength of the attack. This power lasts for 3 rounds, and your fused character cannot take any damage. It may take awhile to find what monster you find suiting. The good point is there are many monsters to capture and raise in the game. When the time arrives, you can feed your monster fruit to evolve into a stronger creature. Aside from IP attacks, you can assign classes to your characters. While this is a interesting edition, its not as detailed as in Dragon Warrior 7. It would be nicer if they innovated this better. Lufia 4 offers a lot of disappointing aspects, but if you can brush them aside Lufia 4 makes a decent RPG game.

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Graphics: 0.900/1.000: (Clear and concised. Despite the occasional frame dropping.)

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Sound: 0.900/1.000: (Good tunes. Sound does tend to lag.)

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Storyline: 0.300/1.000: (This is the first Lufia that your main character doesn't interact. The other characters kinda 'order' your main character to follow. Also, you can't make choices.)

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Control: 0.700/1.000: (The control is a tad stiff but OK for this RPG. The menuing system is pretty well done and anyone can work around in it.)

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Gameplay: 0.100/1.000: (A battle system is so crucial in any RPG game. Lufia 4 unlike ANY of its other Lufias battle systems, is presented very weak which hurts the game play.... a lot.)

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